For Your Reading Pleasure: The “Eusa Story” from RIDDLEY WALKER

Self loved it so much that she gave a copy of it to son when he was 12 (The Indiana University Press Expanded Edition)

He’s a voracious reader of science fiction but he never cracked open the book.

Self still reads it from time to time, to remind herself of what she liked so much about it.

In this dystopian future (Sorry, the word has been much-abused since The Hunger Games, but at the moment self can’t seem to come up with a better word to describe the setting of Riddley Walker), England is in the grip of a nuclear winter. A 12-year-old boy named Riddley Walker wanders the land, telling stories of “the time before.” At 12, he is considered a man (people don’t live much beyond 30 in his world). His most important story is the one he tells about Eusa, because Eusa started the war that brought the world to the apocalypse.

Eusa, if you haven’t figured it out, is the USA. But the legends that got passed on by word of mouth (No newspapers, or tweeting, anymore!) were about this very powerful entity, that got turned into a character named Eusa. A warmonger.

What, and you thought in the world of the future people would still be speaking English like we do? LOL